What is spinodal decomposition

By E. Favvas, Athanasios C. Mitropoulos. 2008

2,283 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract: Phase separation may occur in a way that the growth is not in extent but in amplitude. Only in the unstable region such a procedure is thermodynamically feasible. In a phase diagram the unstable region is defined by the spinodal. When a system has crossed this locus, phase separation occurs spontaneously without the presence of a nucleation step. This process is known as spinodal decomposition and commonly results to a high interconnectivity of the two phases. The Cahn-Hilliard equation describes the kinetics of the process. In this note both processes (nucleation and spinodal) are depicted schematically. Abstract Abstract: Phase separation may occur in a way that the growth is not in extent but in amplitude. Only in the unstable region such a procedure is thermodynamically feasible. In a phase diagram the unstable region is defined by the spinodal. When a system has crossed this locus, phase separation occurs spontaneously without the presence of a nucleation step. This process is known as spinodal decomposition and commonly results to a high interconnectivity of the two phases. The Cahn-Hilliard equation describes the kinetics of the process. In this note both processes (nucleation and spinodal) are depicted schematically. Abstract Abstract: Phase separation may occur in a way that the growth is not in extent but in amplitude. Only in the unstable region such a procedure is thermodynamically feasible. In a phase diagram the unstable region is defined by the spinodal. When a system has crossed this locus, phase separation occurs spontaneously without the presence of a nucleation step. This process is known as spinodal decomposition and commonly results to a high interconnectivity of the two phases. The Cahn-Hilliard equation describes the kinetics of the process. In this note both processes (nucleation and spinodal) are depicted schematically.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Condensed Matter Physics, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a2323531aa5618ef4a9ed90dd3bf2610bfacb38c

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Citations in the corpus

Asymptotic behavior of a Cahn-Hilliard-Navier-Stokes system in 2D (2010, background): “Hilliard [16] who studied the spinodal decomposition of binary alloys (see also [15]).”
Phase-Field Models for Multi-Component Fluid Flows (2012, background): “where Ω is the region of space occupied by the system [19, 20].”
A MIXED DISCONTINUOUS GALERKIN, CONVEX SPLITTING SCHEME FOR A MODIFIED CAHN-HILLIARD EQUATION AND AN EFFICIENT NONLINEAR MULTIGRID SOLVER (2013, background): “Spinodal decomposition is the process whereby a well-mixed binary solution rapidly phase separates into A and B component-rich phase regions and then undergoes domain coarsening on a long time scale [8, 15].”
Automated Derivation of the Adjoint of High-Level Transient Finite Element Programs (2012, methodology): “The Cahn-Hilliard equation is a nonlinear parabolic fourth-order partial differential equation used to describe the separation of two components of a binary fluid [8, 7]:”
Multimaterial structural topology optimization with a generalized Cahn–Hilliard model of multiphase transition (2006, methodology): “per mainly refers to the Cahn‐Hilliard equations (Cahn and Hilliard 1958; Cahn 1961 ) in two or multiphase conditions (Defontaine 1967; Eyre (1993).”
Rigorous Numerics for the Cahn-Hilliard Equation on the Unit Square (2008, neutral): “Introduction The Cahn-Hilliard equation ut = −Δ(Δu + λf(u)), in Ω ⊂ R, ∂νu = ∂νΔu = 0, on ∂Ω, (1) was introduced in [2] and [3] as a model for the process of phase separation of a binary alloy at a fixed temperature.”
On the Cahn-Hilliard equation with irregular potentials and dynamic boundary conditions (2009, background): “, [5], [6], [22] and [32]; see also [25] and [26] for qualitative studies of the spinodal decomposition and [21] for studies on the coarsening.”
Finite element approximation of a Cahn−Hilliard−Navier−Stokes system (2008, background): “Introduction The Cahn–Hilliard equation [10, 11] is a phenomenological model of phase transitions (see the survey work of Elliott [15] for details).”
A multiscale continuum model of the grain-size dependence of the stress hysteresis in shape memory alloy polycrystals (2008, background): “At the equilibrium state (unstable equilibrium) immediately before this instability, the tensile stress is at the spinodal stress rs with e = eAs, after which the modulus becomes negative ( Cahn, 1961 ).”
The nonlocal Cahn–Hilliard equation with singular potential: Well-posedness, regularity and strict separation property (2017, background): “The Cahn–Hilliard system was proposed in [15] (see also [14]) as a model which provides a macroscopic description of the formation and evolution of microstructures during the phase separation in a binary alloys system.”